No. 7 Creighton bolted out of the blocks with six straight wins before stumbling against a pair of ranked teams.
The Bluejays (6-2) will look to regain their footing Sunday when they host rival Nebraska (5-3) in Omaha, Neb.
Ryan Kalkbrenner collected 20 points and a season-high 13 rebounds and Baylor Scheierman had 13 and 11, respectively, in Creighton’s 72-67 loss at No. 2 Texas on Thursday.
Scheierman made just 3 of 13 attempts from 3-point range, however, and the rest of his teammates were a combined 1 of 14 from beyond the arc.
“Baylor has nights where he makes 6 out of 9, and then there’s nights like (Thursday) when he misses some open ones,” Bluejays coach Greg McDermott said. “But we don’t ever want him to stop shooting. I thought we made the right play for the most part to get him those shots.”
Scheierman has made three 3-pointers in each of his last five games. He’s connected at least twice from beyond the arc in each of his last 15 dating back to last season with South Dakota State.
Trey Alexander endured a horrible shooting performance against the Longhorns, misfiring on all eight of his attempts — including two from 3-point range.
“I feel like we played a good game besides just missing shots,” Alexander said, per Omaha.com. “When you’re missing shots it’s hard to win. But we had a couple mental lapses, we let a couple guys come off and get a couple of big shots. That’s what hurt us down the stretch.”
Perhaps tired legs could’ve been an issue for Creighton, which posted a 2-1 record in the Maui Invitational the previous week.
“Three games in three days against ranked teams (in Hawaii) and then to come in here,” McDermott said. “That’s a lot to ask of my team.”
While the Bluejays have dropped two in a row, the Cornhuskers answered a two-game skid with convincing wins over Atlantic Coast Conference members Florida State and Boston College.
Keisei Tominaga tied a career high with 23 points to pace Nebraska to an 88-67 win over the Eagles on Wednesday in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
Tominaga scored 17 of those during a first half in which he made all five of his shots from both the floor and the free-throw line.
“I think you see with the experience of being in it for a year now and the international experience he had — I think that gave Keisei a huge shot of confidence going into this season,” Cornhuskers coach Fred Hoiberg said, per the Lincoln Journal Star. “He understands the speed of the game much more now than coming off of his junior college year and not only shooting the ball, but you see what he’s doing off the bounce right now.”
Tominaga joined C.J. Wilcher in sinking four 3-pointers for Nebraska, which shot 61.5 percent from the floor (32 of 52) and 52.2 percent from beyond the arc (12 of 23).
Wilcher scored 15 points off the bench in the Cornhuskers’ 77-59 setback to Creighton last season in Lincoln, Neb.
Ryan Nembhard scored 22 points and Kalkbrenner added 12 points and nine rebounds to fuel the Bluejays in that meeting.
–Field Level Media
